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On Monday, March 9, 1959, at about 7:05 p.m., police responded to an emergency call on McCowan Road south of Ellesmere Road in the Scarborough area of Toronto.
The victim was Patricia Lupton, age 12 years old and was discovered off the roadway, suffering from medical trauma due to strangulation.
Her body was still warm, but despite life-saving efforts by emergency personnel, the young girl was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators believe the victim was last seen alive leaving her residence en route to Kennedy Park Plaza sometime at about 6:20 pm.
She had left home that evening to arrange a babysitting job. Her mother said that her daughter had added her name to a list placed on a supermarket bulletin board offering babysitting services.
The plaza, where she was to meet the man who identified himself as “Johnson”, was a block from where Patricia lived at Frimette Court housing project. She was invited to come down to the local store and meet him.
“Johnson” was going to take her to babysit his kids, and then he was going to bring her back to the store that night.
She was seen at 6:27 waiting in front of the supermarket.
At 7.25, her still warm body was found by three men searching in a field for a truck reportedly bogged down in mud.
She had been strangled, and a scarf was knotted tightly around her neck.
The field where her body was abandoned was 4 miles north of the plaza where she was last seen alive.
A broken car horn ring was found near her body, and police considered this a possible clue.
There was an intense manhunt for the perpetrator, but over 60 years later, no one has been arrested in connection with Patricia’s death.
The unsolved murder of 12-year-old Patricia Lupton in 1959 is now Toronto police’s oldest cold case.
If you have any information regarding this case, please contact Homicide at 416-808-7400, or at homicide@torontopolice.on.ca